As I consider all that we have experienced over this past year, I’m thankful for all the hard work that students, parents, and teachers have given in a collaborative effort to see our children flourish and learn.  I’m also thankful that the students will have a chance to rest and let what they have learned sink in over the next few months before we begin working on their formal education once again in August.

We hope that our students are always being challenged to think and learn.  Many parents have this same goal in mind and have asked for summer ideas for their child to stay sharp and ready for the upcoming year.  We believe summer is a time to engage the imagination and do activities that will give students the motivation to continue learning math when they return to school the next year.  With this end in mind, please allow me to recommend some math games, books and activities that will be a means to developing a curiosity and motivation for math education.  Of course, these are just ideas for various ages of students – please use them to think of more ideas that will fit your family.  It is the hope that in doing these activities students will learn to enjoy math and see its beauty.  So, set this list next to your summer reading list and have fun with your child or ask them to have fun on their own as they engage a world of number, pattern and order this summer.

If you would like to read more about math to have a more informed conversation, I would invite you to read Arithmetic for Parents by Ron Aharoni or Beauty for Truth’s Sake by Stratford Caldecott.  I would be happy to sit down over the summer to read a selection from these or any other books that you are interested in discussing together.

Top 10 Math Games

These games are for a variety of ages. Click the links to read more about them and see purchasing options. Many of these are appropriate for the entire family!

• Swish
• Sumoku
• Set
• Rack-O
• Ubongo
• Callisto
• Zeus on the Loose
• Blink
• Risk
• Chess

Top 10 Activities, Puzzles and Workbooks

Some of these are activities that you can purchase and others are fun ideas. Like the games, these work for a variety of ages. Feel free to comment below with some of your favorite math games and activities!

• Building Thinking Skills workbooks 
• Color by Number
• Tangrams
• Rubik’s Cube
• Count by 2’s, 3’s or 4’s while playing “hot potato.”
• Following directions for a recipe and try to double it
• Do a woodworking project
• Draw a scaled chalk drawing on the driveway from a simple hand sketched drawing
• Sudoku puzzles
• Snap Circuits

Whitefield Academy is enrolling for the 2020/2021 school year in the school building! Click below to learn more.

Many of our math students are also athletes and are playing sports over the summer. Click below to learn more about our classical approach to athletics.